Creepy Dolls

Finally the weather is starting to cooperate, we had a week that was in the 90's which completely disrupted my reading schedule.  Yesterday however we had a nice gigantic storm that has dropped the temps to fall levels and now the leaves are finally starting to turn.  In celebration of this wondrous event I shall ramble about a bit of a ghost story I recently finished.  Doll Bones by Holly Black.  I usually prefer this authors MG stuff to her YA stuff so I had high hopes for this one, plus creepy dolls are awesome.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD

Three 12 year old friends Zach, Poppy and Alice have an extensive imaginary game that they all play together.  They use customized action figures, scenes built from stuff they find and of course their own imaginations.  They have been playing the game for years and it is the focus of their friendship.  At this point in time the central figure in the game is an old doll that Poppy's mother keeps locked in a cabinet, hoping to sell it to an antique dealer some day. The kids call her the Queen and imagine she is locked in the cabinet under a curse.  We learn a bit about our trio.  Zach has recently joined the basketball team and is excelling at it, his favorite character to play is William the Blade, a pirate with unknown parentage.  His father who left three years ago has recently come back and the three of them (Mom, Dad, and Zach) are trying to adjust to being a family again.  Alice lost her parents when she was young and is being raised by her super strict grandmother.  Her main character in the game is Lady Jaye a thief who is as wild and impetuous as Alice is careful and thoughtful.  Alice lives in fear of her grandmother taking away the things she loves, being in school plays and hanging out with her friends being chief among them.  Poppy is one of several siblings, all of whom (besides Poppy) have a hoodlum like reputation that they delight in perpetrating. Poppy tends to play the villains and is able to keep the story going better then anybody.  Of the three she is most attached to the

game.  Zach comes home from school one day and finds his back of action figures he uses to play the game missing.  Turns out his father was concerned that he was not focusing enough on his basketball and that he might get teased in school, so he threw them out.  Of course this sends Zach into a bit of a tailspin, ultimately deciding to never play the game again.  He harshly tells Alice and Poppy that he is to old to be playing it anymore.  Alice accepts it sadly, but resigned.  Poppy however does not accept it and bugs Zach about it incessantly.  Finally late one night Zach gets talked into meeting with Poppy and Alice outside.  Poppy produces the Queen doll and proceeds to tell the other two that she had a dream/vision that a girl named Eleanor came to her and told her that the doll they call The Queen is actually made from her body.  She said she had died and her father so overcome with grief could not let her go and made a clay from her bones to make the doll, used her hair for the dolls hair, and then placed the remainder of her ashes inside the dolls body.  The ghost girl told Poppy that she couldn't rest until she was buried in her empty grave.  Zach and Alice are both skeptical, but are finally convinced to go on an a quest to bury the doll.  They board a bus in the middle of the night and are a little confused when people continually refer to the four of them, and their quiet blond friend.  At first they thing people are referring to the doll which Poppy has taken to carrying around like a baby, but it becomes more obvious that people really think there is a fourth member of the party.  The original plan was to be back before dark the next day so Alice would not be in trouble, but like all good adventures that quickly becomes impossible.  Many adventures follow including, pop rock donuts, a stolen sailboat and a night in a library.  Zach starts having dreams about the ghost girl along with Poppy and while it is never 100% explained it seems that after her mother died Eleanor's strict Aunt came to help raise her.  She never let her play with the dolls her father made her, and continually tried to mold the girl into a proper young lady.  For some reason Eleanor ended up being chased to the roof of her house where she fell
to her death.  Zach, Alice and Poppy have many fights and find out that adventuring in real life is not at all like it is in the stories (where they never seem to have to take a bathroom break).  Eventually they are able to complete their quest and bury the doll in her proper grave.  The adventure gives them a new game to play, on that is more verbal and story based and less play based, a more grown up version if you will.
Ok so I obviously glossed over a lot of detail in the synopsis, but you should go read it for your self anyways.  I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading this book.  I had read a couple good reviews on it so I was hopeful.  Over all I really really liked it and kind of want to give it to every 12 year old I know. Best parts-I loved the friendship between the three kids.  With each one coming from a different family dynamic, there interplay obviously helped to fill holes in each others lives.  The anger Poppy felt when Zach seemingly callously quit the game was indicative of the deep hurt she felt, not so much about the game, but Zach's dismissal of it.  Alice was a great character because unlike fierce Poppy and leader Zach who were constantly vying for control (even if it was mostly subconscious) she had to be the peace maker, the one who always had to try and balance everybody else, her friends, her family, her freedoms vs restrictions.  Her life was balanced so that she could do what she loved, while trying to not give her grandmother a reason to take it away from her.  When Zach and especially Poppy seem to disregard this when it came to the quest, Alice finally explodes, and it is glorious.  I always have a soft spot in my heart for kids who try and do the right thing and get teased for it, especially now when being "bad" is the cool thing.  Poppy's comments about the other two growing up and leaving her behind is a great look at how every kid, every person grows at their own pace, and sometimes that causes problems.  And of course they explore the whole what does it mean to grow up, when should a kid have to grow up, why is imagination and play reserved only for the very young?  All kinds of great thinking things in this book.  The only real down side was I wanted it to be a bit creepier, the cover promised a creepy ghost story on which it only partly
delivered.  There were moments, but the focus was so much on the friendship, that the ghost story was like tertiary to the other storylines.  I wanted the actual story of our little ghost girl to more fleshed out as well, the reasoning behind her being so angry was mushy at best, leaving me unconvinced that she was all that bad.  Of course part of that may have been to keep some ambiguity on weather it was really a ghost story, or a shared imaginary story between the kids.  Overall it was a great read, it had an old school adventure story feel, like the books I used to read when I was in middle school which was pretty awesome.  I would recommend it to anybody who likes friendship adventures, not to scary ghost stories, and does not have a phobia of creepy dolls :-)  I would seriously recommend it to any middle schooler especially because I think as readable for us adults as it is, it would very much speak to a person of that age group.  I give it 8 our of 10 creepy dolls.
For an added bonus check out this great creepy doll post over on Epbot funny, creepy and just awesome!
What creeps you out?  Do you like your scary books sleep with the lights on scary or just need an extra stuffed teddy scary?  Do you ever have the urge to put a super creepy figure on somebodies pillow?